For example, Ti2O3, as a typical example of titanium oxides, is a phase-transition material having various interesting properties such as the metal-insulator transition and the paramagnetic-antiferromagnetic transition. Further, Ti2O3 is also known for its infrared absorption property, thermoelectric effect, magnetoelectric (ME) effect and magnetoresistance (MR) effect as has been discovered in recent years. Those properties have only been studied with bulk bodies (−μm size) (e.g., nonpatent document 1), and have not yet been vastly clear in terms of mechanisms thereof.
Nonpatent document 1: Hitoshi SATO, and others, JOURNAL OF THE PHYSICAL SOCIETY OF JAPAN Vol.75, No.5, May, 2006, pp. 053702/1-4